The Secrets Between Us (33 page)

Only, in my heart, I would know it was there. Not knowing what it said would eat away at me. It would spoil my day.

The day was tainted already.

The woman in front of me stepped forward. I opened the message. It said:
Need to talk asap
.

‘How many items?’ asked the young girl who was looking after the changing rooms.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I have to go.’

I went back outside the shop and called the detective’s mobile phone. It was switched off. I rummaged in my bag until I found his card and called the landline, but the man who answered said the DI was in a meeting, and asked if I wanted to leave a message. I said I didn’t, switched the phone off and put it back in my bag.

There was still plenty of time for shopping but, now, the crowds no longer seemed jolly and exciting, they seemed overwhelming. I had to get out, away from all the people.

I went past a newsagent’s. The board outside said:
MISSING HEIRESS LATEST
. I went inside and read the front page of the
Bristol Evening Post
.

There was a photograph of Damian, with a police officer on either side of him. One of the arms of his coat hung loose at his side. The headline read:
SECRET LIFE OF GEN’S HALF-BRO.

Damian had been arrested for some crane-climbing stunt and it turned out his fingerprints matched those found at the Tenby flat. What were they intimating? That Genevieve and Damian were in a relationship? Or that he was stalking her? I put down the paper and saw the girl at the counter watching me. I bought a packet of mints.

I followed my feet. I didn’t know where I was going. I left the centre and the shops, crossed a busy road and found myself walking beside the cathedral. It was much quieter there, and the old stone of the building calmed me. I walked beside it and past it and found myself at the door to Bristol’s Central Library.

I had not intended to seek out the library, I had not even known where it was, but now I stood outside it, looking in through the window in the door.

I realized I was at a crossroads. If I went in, if I searched for the records of Alexander’s trial and read them, then I
would never be able to undo the knowledge. It would be inside me, part of me, always.

If I walked away, I might never know what Alexander had done. I would go with him, wherever it was we ended up going, and I would be innocent, but the not knowing would constantly be between us, like a wall. I did not really have a choice. I pushed open the door and went in.

I went to the help desk and asked if I could go through back copies of the
Western Daily Press
. I didn’t know where Alexander’s trial had been held but figured that, even if it was London, the paper would have covered the story of a local man.

The librarian was very helpful. She asked when Alexander had been convicted. I worked it out to within a few months by counting backwards from the date of Jamie’s birth. When I’d given her the information she requested, she disappeared for five minutes and returned with a stack of boxes of microfiche coils.

‘These are copies of the papers covering that three-month period. We haven’t had the time to put all these online yet,’ she said apologetically. ‘This way: I’ll show you where the machines are.’

It took an age to go through the records. The film, which was inches wide, springy and hard to manage, had to be fed through spools at either side of the projector and then wound on manually until the pages showed up on the screen in front of me, and I had to adjust the focus constantly. After a while, I learned where, in each paper, to look for the court reports, each time half-hoping that I would see Alexander’s name and half-hoping I wouldn’t.

It took a couple of hours-but eventually I found it. Not in the court report section towards the back of the papers, but on the front page.

The headline was:
GUILTY
! And the strapline said:
SHAME OF MAN WHO STOLE FROM FRIEND
.

There was a photograph of Alexander – a younger, desperately handsome Alexander – wearing a dark suit, shielding his face with a newspaper as he went into court. A few steps behind him was an older, suited man – his lawyer? And a short-haired pixie-like girl in a chic dark-coloured dress with a wide, white belt: Genevieve. Inset was a smaller picture of another young man, his face haggard and hard set. A dark-haired, plump young woman wearing sunglasses had her arm around the man: the friend and his wife, I assumed.

The headline and the images disturbed me and my eyes were burning from looking at the screen for so long. I switched off the machine and sat for a few moments rubbing my temples with my forefingers. Perhaps I should leave it there. Perhaps that was enough. So Alexander was a thief. At least he hadn’t murdered anyone.

I rummaged in my bag and found the mints. I prised one loose with my thumbnail and put it in my mouth. Its sweetness made me feel slightly less nauseous.

Shame of man who stole from friend
. There was little space for misinterpretation of those words.

I felt terribly tired.

I had come this far. I might as well know the whole truth.

I flicked the switch to power up the projector and, as the screen came into focus, took a deep breath and began to read:

A man who pleaded guilty to stealing more than £100,000 from his best friend and business partner has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Alexander Westwood, aged 29, of Wells, Somerset, dramatically changed his plea after just one day in court, admitting to taking money from the reclamation and masonry recycling company established by Matt Bryant. Westwood had also been accused of tampering with the accounts to hide the theft.

Judge Hilary Enright described Westwood’s actions as ‘despicable’. ‘What you did to Mr Bryant and his family goes beyond theft. You sacrificed a lifelong friendship to satisfy your greed,’ she said. ‘You deceived and lied to a good man, a man who had worked hard to build up his business and who believed it was in safe hands; a man who trusted you. Because of your actions, Mr Bryant’s company is on the brink of bankruptcy. His health and relationships have suffered. He is facing repossession of his home. I have no qualms about sentencing you to the maximum gaol term possible in these circumstances.’

Westwood, wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a dark tie, remained expressionless throughout.

The court had earlier heard how Westwood and Bryant had been friends since school.

Westwood had served an apprenticeship as a mason and spotted the potential in restoring damaged stoneware for Bryant’s reclamation business, which had been set up with the help of a loan from Bryant’s father. The Worcester-based business recently won a national sustainability award and was attracting major contracts.

Until today, Westwood had denied any involvement in the theft, despite records proving that the money was moved through a number of private accounts to which only he had access. He has consistently refused to say what he did with the cash.

There were a couple more paragraphs, but I stopped reading there.

It was pretty conclusive. I could see no mitigation, no possible vindication or excuse for what Alexander had done.

He was a thief and a cheat and he’d deceived his best friend. Morally, Alexander’s actions were unjustifiable. And if he were capable of such disloyalty to his best friend, somebody who had, as I understood from the report, helped
Alexander, then could anyone truly trust him again?

Yet still … I found it difficult to believe what I had read.

I’d only known him a few months, but Alexander seemed to be one of the least materialistic people I had ever come across. He had no interest in cars or holidays, designer labels or investments. He worked hard, but that was because he was a hard worker, not because he wanted to be wealthy. Or, at least, he’d never expressed that ambition to me. He was not a gambler; he did not use drugs, or drink excessively. And I had always believed him; he had told me some unpalatable truths but I had been utterly convinced he was not a liar.

But he had lied. I’d heard him lie to Virginia about him and me. And first he said he hadn’t and then he admitted that he had stolen the money from Matt Bryant. He stood up in court and said he was guilty. He had accepted the humiliation of prison without protest; he hadn’t gone down arguing his innocence, like innocent people generally do.

Even if I accepted Alexander’s guilt, there were more questions than answers. Where had the money gone? If Alexander was penniless when he came out of prison and married Genevieve, if he had to borrow more money from Philip to set himself up in business, then what had he done with all that cash?

I had been tired before. Now, I was exhausted and I felt terribly lonely. There was nobody I could talk to about this; not a single person. My friends and family would be outraged and horrified to find out yet another damning chapter in Alexander’s history, and to raise the subject in Burrington Stoke, given the current mood against Alexander and myself, would be stupid and perhaps even dangerous.

And what about Jamie? Alexander had a criminal record. I was almost certain that people who’d been in prison weren’t allowed to look after small children. If he’d been Jamie’s biological father then it would be nothing to worry
about, but he wasn’t, and that made his position – our position – even more tenuous.

We had to get away.

I switched off the machine and wound the microfiche back into its coil. I put the coil in the box and carried it, with the others I’d collected, back to the desk. I thanked the librarian. I was wondering if there was anywhere in the library I could lie down and sleep for a couple of hours, some dark corner where nobody would notice me. It was so nice and quiet in there with just the books and the readers, the soothing rustle of paper, the warm air pumping from the radiators and the occasional hum of the photocopier. Even the phone bells were muted.

‘Are you feeling all right, my love?’ asked the librarian.

‘Yes, I’m just a bit tired.’

‘Did you find what you wanted?’

‘Yes,’ I said, although the truth was the exact opposite.

I went back outside. The cold air was shocking.

Already the morning was over and the short, winter afternoon had begun. I had no appetite for shopping. I walked through cobbled streets to the waterfront, ordered a coffee and sat at a bench-table that looked out over the river. The sun was low in the sky and there was a bitter chill in the air. The narrowboats and houseboats moored in the harbour were strung with fairy lights that reflected in the black water. It was a lovely view but I was not in the mood.

Trust, I thought. With Alexander, everything always seemed to come down to trust.

I had broken his trust by looking up the history he wanted to keep secret from me; but my betrayal was nothing compared to what he had done to Matt Bryant.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

WHEN ALEXANDER CALLED
that evening, I found it difficult to speak to him, knowing what I now knew. I encouraged Jamie to spend as much time talking to his father as possible, and when it was my turn I struggled to keep my emotions under control. I asked questions, listening but not hearing as Alexander described his day and enthused about the Cornish mason’s yard.

‘Are you all right, Sarah?’ he asked. ‘You’re very quiet.’ He was in a pub; I could hear people laughing behind him. It made me feel very lonely out in the big house, in the middle of nowhere, with the child I loved and who wasn’t Alexander’s son. A light snow was falling beyond the window and the old oil burner was struggling to keep the radiators warm.

‘Yes, of course, I’m fine,’ I said, but I wasn’t. My world felt increasingly shaky around me, as if it were about to collapse. Everything was precarious. I felt as if I were on the brink of losing the man I thought I loved most in the world, and the child I knew I did. My mind was full of things I wished I didn’t know. I couldn’t say that to Alexander, so I told him I was tired.

‘Busy day shopping?’ asked Alexander, with the hint of a tease in his voice. The implication that I’d spent a frivolous
day doing nothing much but spending money that I had legitimately earned angered me.

‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘Something’s burning in the oven.’

Later, I sat beside Jamie on the living-room settee, and my arm was around him. I held him as close as I could, smiling at his chatter. I had promised Jamie I would never leave him, and I had made a vow with myself that I would protect the child, no matter what. I would not let him be hurt any more, in any way, by anyone. So there were no decisions to be made. Where Jamie was, I was too; always. I might not like what Alexander had done to Matt Bryant. I didn’t like the fact that he was an ex-convict or that he’d told me what he’d done to go to prison was not a big deal, but, as he was always saying, the past was over. It didn’t matter; it was not relevant to us now. Perhaps in time I’d be able to convince myself of that.

Jamie fell asleep beside me on the settee. The hands on the clock went round, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t bring myself to carry him upstairs. I was afraid of what might happen up there, beneath the eaves of that big, dark house. I had a feeling something was lurking, waiting. I looked at the television but was not concentrating on the narrative of the programme. My mind was full of two little words that filled me with terror:
You next
. They went round and round my brain on a loop. If I didn’t know what had become of Genevieve, how would I know when the same thing was about to happen to me?

I fetched the chenille throw from the kitchen and Alexander’s big coat and made a makeshift bed for the two of us on the settee. I left the lamps on in the living room and unplugged the telephone. I tried to think pleasant, soothing thoughts but, every time I was about to drift off, the words came back and tapped me on the shoulder before they whispered in my ear:
You next
.